2020수능특강 영어독해연습 3강 본문

3강

1

If you find it difficult to stay wise-minded when your teen is rude, it’s no surprise. The deck is stacked against you because of several inescapable facts of normal teenage behavior. For one thing, teens often try to pick a fight. That’s because, in the chaos and uncertainty of adolescence, parents are a secure base—sort of like the eye of a storm. Teens want to discharge the garbage of their day onto someone who will take it and love them anyway, sticking with them through thick and thin. If it becomes evident that everything you say is “wrong” (even though you know you’re right), you can stop the merry-go-round whenever you like by simply withdrawing. Don’t walk out with an angry refrain like “Well, I was just trying to be nice, and look at how you treat me!” Instead, say something humble (and accurate), such as, “I can see that you aren’t in the mood for chatting. Oh, well, maybe later.” Unless their nastiness is persistent, assume that the interaction is more about an opportunity for dumping the garbage than a reflection of your overall relationship.

 

2

If I say to you, ‘Don’t think of a white bear’, you will find it difficult not to think of a white bear. In this way, thought suppression can actually increase the thoughts one wishes to suppress instead of calming them. One common example of this is that people on a diet who try not to think about food often begin to think much more about food. This ironic effect seems to be caused by the interplay of two related cognitive processes. This dual-process system involves, first, an intentional operating process, which consciously attempts to locate thoughts unrelated to the suppressed ones. Second, and simultaneously, an unconscious monitoring process tests whether the operating system is functioning effectively. If the monitoring system encounters thoughts inconsistent with the intended ones, it prompts the intentional operating process to ensure that these are replaced by appropriate thoughts. However, it is argued, the intentional operating system can fail due to increased cognitive load caused by fatigue, stress and emotional factors, and so the monitoring process filters the inappropriate thoughts into consciousness, making them highly accessible.

 

3

A trait can be said to be adaptive if it is maintained in a population by selection. We can put the matter more precisely by saying that another trait is nonadaptive, or “abnormal,” if it reduces the fitness of individuals that consistently manifest it under environmental circumstances that are usual for the species. In other words, deviant responses in abnormal environments may not be nonadaptive—they may simply reflect flexibility in a response that is quite adaptive in the environments ordinarily encountered by the species. A trait can be switched from an adaptive to a nonadaptive status by a simple change in the environment. For example, the sickle-cell trait of human beings, determined by the heterozygous state of a single gene, is adaptive under living conditions in Africa, where it confers some degree of resistance to falciparum malaria. In Americans of African descent, it is nonadaptive, for the simple reason that its bearers are no longer confronted by malaria.

 

4

The philosopher Nelson Goodman argued that we should replace the question “What is art?” with the question “When is art?” The same object can function as a work of art or not, depending on how the object is viewed. When an object functions as art, it exhibits certain “symptoms” of the aesthetic. For example, an object functioning as art is relatively replete (full), meaning that more of its physical properties are part of its meaning and should be attended to than when that same object is not functioning as a work of art. Goodman asks us to consider a zigzag line. Told that the line is a stock market graph, all we attend to are the peaks and dips. We could get the same information from a set of numbers. But if this same line is part of a drawing (say, the outline of a mountain), all of the line’s physical properties are suddenly important and part of what the artist wants us to attend to—its color, texture, edges, thickness, among other things. And we cannot translate this experience into a set of numbers.

 

5

Because of the perceptual frames users of computer software and websites have, they often click buttons or links without looking carefully at them. Their perception of the display is based more on what their frame for the situation leads them to expect than on what is actually on the screen. This sometimes confounds software designers, who expect users to see what is on the screen—but that isn’t how human vision works. For example, if the positions of the “Next” and “Back” buttons on the last page of a multistep dialog box switched, many people would not immediately notice the switch. Their visual system would have been lulled into inattention by the consistent placement of the buttons on the prior several pages. Even after unintentionally going backward a few times, they might continue to perceive the buttons in their standard locations. This is why consistent placement of controls is a common user-interface guideline, to ensure that reality matches the user’s frame for the situation.

 

6

In 1979, Christopher Connolly cofounded a psychology consultancy in the United Kingdom to help high achievers perform at their best. Over the years, Connolly became curious about why some professionals floundered outside a narrow expertise, while others were remarkably adept at expanding their careers—moving from playing in a world-class orchestra, for example, to running one. Thirty years after he started, Connolly returned to school to do a PhD investigating that very question. Connolly’s primary finding was that early in their careers, those who later made successful transitions had broader training and kept multiple “career streams” open even as they pursued a primary specialty. They “traveled on an eight-lane highway,” he wrote, rather than down a single-lane one-way street. They had range. The successful adapters were excellent at taking knowledge from one pursuit and applying it creatively to another, and at avoiding cognitive entrenchment. They employed what Hogarth called a “circuit breaker.” They drew on outside experiences and analogies to interrupt their inclination toward a previous solution that may no longer work. Their skill was in avoiding the same old patterns.

 

7

In a recent discussion of human rights in social work and human services practices, a researcher argues that the risk of strongly held primary values is that they can easily become an inflexible form of universalism, in which a single view of what it is to be human can become imposed by those with power (whether political, economic, professional, academic or cultural). This can lead to an ironic situation in which human rights become associated with totalitarian ways of imposing particular ideals, through asserting that what it is to be human has to take one particular form. The answer, for the researcher, is to seek a ‘shared humanity’, in which all members of a community are able to play active roles in the construction of what humanity means, and allows for these definitions to differ and to overlap without having to be identical. This requires that practitioners rethink their understanding of community, in which there is a balance between what unites people and the many differences between them.

 

8

 

When biologists consider complex human activities such as the arts, they tend to assume that their compelling qualities are derivations of basic drives. If any given activity can be seen to aid survival or facilitate adaptation to the environment, or to be derived from behaviour which does so, it ‘makes sense’ in biological terms. For example, the art of painting may originate from the human need to comprehend the external world through vision; an achievement which makes it possible to act upon the environment or influence it in ways which promote survival. The Paleolithic artists who drew and painted animals on the walls of their caves were using their artistic skills for practical reasons. Drawing is a form of abstraction which may be compared with the formation of verbal concepts. It enables the draughtsman to study an object in its absence, to experiment with various images of it, and thus, at least in fantasy, to exert power over it.

 

9

Self-awareness, or reflective thought, is the main attribute distinguishing humans from animals. It is the consciousness that enables us to contemplate ourselves. Reflection is the power to turn one’s consciousness upon oneself, to know oneself and, especially, to know that one knows. Humans are the only creation in the universe who can be the object of their own reflection and, because of that, another world is born: an inner world, a reality in which no lower animal can ever participate. Incapable of contemplating itself, or of being aware of itself as the conscious subject, not even a higher type of animal, such as a dog or cat that knows who its master is and where its food is, can know that it knows. In consequence, it is denied access to a whole domain of reality in which mankind can move freely. Systems of physics, philosophy, mathematics, and astronomy, for example, have all been constructed because of man’s unique ability to reflect inwardly.

 

10

I understand it is not likely you are going to tell an interviewer about all of your job search activities or provide a status report, no, clearly it’s none of their business. However, there is nothing wrong with being honest to a limited degree, if you are reaching a critical stage with another company with whom you are also interviewing. Reasonably speaking, most of us are pursuing more than one job at a time. It’s not a mistake to say to a hiring official, “I appreciate the opportunity for this interview, I am interested in this job and your company, but I think it is fair to tell you I am also talking to some other companies, and one of them has invited me to a final interview.” Yes, this can be considered a take-away close, but it is simply the truth. There is no need to, and I suggest you should not, share the name or details of the other company; just making them aware of your status is enough. I would, however, caution you that if it isn’t true, don’t fake it.

 

11

The fact that emotions are unlearned, automated, and set by the genome always raises the specter of genetic determinism. Is there nothing personal and educable about one’s emotions? The answer is that there is plenty. The essential mechanism of the emotions in a normal brain is indeed quite similar across individuals, and a good thing too because it provides humanity, in diverse cultures, with a common ground of fundamental preferences on the matters of pain and pleasure. But while the mechanisms are distinctly similar, the circumstances in which certain stimuli have become emotionally competent for you are unlikely to be the same as for me. There are things that you fear that I do not, and vice versa; things you love and I do not, and vice versa; and many, many things that we both fear and love. In other words, emotional responses are considerably customized relative to the causative stimulus. In this regard, we are quite alike but not entirely.

 

12

One of the most widespread, sadly mistaken, environmental myths is that living “close to nature” out in the country or in a leafy suburb is the best “green” lifestyle. Cities, on the other hand, are often blamed as a major cause of ecological destruction—artificial, crowded places that suck up precious resources. Yet, when you look at the facts, nothing could be farther from the truth. The pattern of life in the country and most suburbs involves long hours in the automobile each week, burning fuel and spewing exhaust to get to work, buy groceries, and take kids to school and activities. City dwellers, on the other hand, have the option of walking or taking transit to work, shops, and school. The larger yards and houses found outside cities also extract an environmental toll in terms of energy use, water use, and land use. It’s clear that the future of the Earth depends on more people gathering together in compact communities.